US taps social media for intelligence � Cuban envoy

Lerato Maleke | Friday April 25, 2014 12:05

 

Ambassador Juan Corrales, who is also responsible for the rest of the SADC region, told a press conference this week that Washington is using undercover subversive acts, including the use of social media tools, to destabilise the long-standing communist republic.

Corrales said for more than five decades, the US had been allocating millions to promote the overthrow of the Cuban government and the creation of political opposition.

He said the US government was using both traditional and more sophisticated methods to effect political, social and economic change in Cuba, including social media applications.

“Of late, Cuban Telecomms (ETECSA) has detected malicious variants such as sending messages promoting calls to voicemail using deceptive or manipulative techniques that cause economic damage to users and the institution itself,” he said.

“All these technological attacks generate overuse of installed capacity in the cellular network of Cuba, detrimental to the quality of service, which directly harms the Cuban population, which is a user of these services.”

Corrales said a social network called ZunZuneo had been created by a US agency in 2010 with the specific intent of generating opposition to the Cuban government.

“USAID planned to create ZunZuneo a Cuban Twitter to undermine the Cuban government,” he said, adding that, “the social network was active for two years until 2012 when it was said to have around 40,000 users. In reality they (US) illicitly obtained the databases of ETECSA while this private network gathered users’ data without their consent to be used for political purposes.”

The Ambassador said the Associated Press (AP) had investigated and reported details of the development of ZunZuneo, with US agency funding. He said AP had confirmed the repeated complaints by the Cuban government regarding the US government’s subversive plans against Cuba.

“Although the U.S. acknowledged funding the creation of ZunZuneo, it denied the real aim of this social network,” he said.

“But ZunZuneo was doomed from the start, as the counter-revolution does not have popular support in Cuba and the plan consisted in sending spam messages to mobile phones, and the alteration of the flow of information and Internet use in Cuba,” he asserted.

Corrales said since 2009, ETECSA had detected spam messaging traffic from the ZunZuneo platform due to repeated complaints from users about unwanted messages.

“The network creators tried to hide from the Cuban government, and created an intricate system of front companies in third countries,” he said.

He added that, “subscribers never knew that the service was created by the US government or that their private information was gathered for political use.”

Corrales claimed that the US considered social networks as critical for foreign policy, through their intelligence potential.

“European lawmakers have publicly expressed their disapproval of the US cyber espionage. US agencies monitor phone calls and emails and Washington uses networks such as Google, Facebook and other consumer technology for its operations,” said Ambassador Corrales.